no news

living in italy doesn't stop me from following the dutch news. there's one dutch channel on my television and i follow the newspapers. dutch journalism seems to develop more and more the competence to spend hours on no news. two weeks ago the television evenings were occupied and the papers were filled with interviews, expert opinions and historical overviews on the 11 city skating tour that then in the end didn't happen. not enough ice.
since yesterday journalists are spending an enormous amount of time on reporting about the condition of the second son of the dutch queen who ended up in a hospital in innsbruck after being caught by an avalanche while skiing in the austrian mountains. the news is that there is no news and there will be no news in the coming 2 days. reporters are standing in front of the hospital, in front of the palace where the royal family lives but where nobody is home because they are all in austria and in front of the parliament telling that there is no news. dutch viewers are presented with holiday movies of the last 50 years of the royal family skiing in austria but still also after watching this there is now news from innsbruck. and of course there are the experts! experts on avalanches, experts on skiing, experts on the royal family, experts on austria, experts on health conditions of people who end up in avalanches, experts on health conditions of royal families and experts on dramatical situations in which queens, kings, princes and princesses were involved. serious talk-shows and well respected journalists have stopped doing their normal work and make extra hours to report there is no news from innsbruck.
i spend the whole day next to my phone waiting for a call to be interviewed. i consider myself an expert. i know more than ten austrian people, i've been in austria many times, i have been skiing in france which is not austria but would be interesting to compare, i live in italy which would give a kind of mediterranean flavor to the interview and here we have earth quakes and volcanos which also can be very dramatic. probably tomorrow they will call...

passion and ambiguity

this day was all about ‘passion’ and ‘ambiguity’. to be more specific: the morning was about passion and the evening dealt with ambiguity. reason is the preparation work for training courses on these topics. well and in the afternoon i spend one and a half hour watching bloopers from seinfeld (seasons  6,7,8 and 9) played guitar for half an hour and made 2 pancakes for myself. not sure if this is really valuable information but the picture is anyway complete. not that I have an enormous amount of readers but you don’t want people later sending emails asking you about your afternoon activities.

anyway: passion and ambiguity!

i became more and more aware how closely these two issues are connected. passion is a very ambiguous thing and ambiguity is in many cases strongly related to your passion.

or: maybe the biggest ambiguity in our life is how to deal with our passions. if you just don’t pay attention to your passions life could be quite simple to live. you just do what everybody else does. you go with the flow, follow a decent education, get yourself a normal not to challenging job, find a partner, produce children, relax in the evening and the weekend and try to deal with the challenges that life will bring anyway. and of course sometimes there will be these moments that you want to jump out… to travel the world with a backpack… to quit your job and become a musician singing songs in pubs all over the world … to spend the rest of your life growing plants in an enormous garden… to climb a huge mountain… to start a new life with a new love… to start your own pub or restaurant… to move to iceland or brazil…

but then you think one more time and laugh about yourself: aaaah these silly passions.

what however when we do follow our passions? so many people are telling you these days to follow your passion! but what when we do?  immediately we will find ourselves in quite ambiguous situations. if you have only one big passion things could be a bit more easier, depending of course on the passion. when your big and one and only passion from being a child is to be for example a post(wo)man or a dancer you can work on that and you might have a big chance to get there. still… if you lack any sense of rhythm the royal ballet might not want you. but most of us don’t have one ever lasting passion. we have more… we change and get new ones. when is the moment something becomes really a passion? what are the quality criteria for a real passion? how many passions can you follow at the same time without running around like a complete idiot? will you still be loved if you run around climbing mountains, traveling to brazil, starting a new love, playing the guitar in a californian pub  and only talking to your plants?

it’s ambiguous. to be honest my preference goes to following your passions as much as possible. but how much do i do that? do i do that enough? how much change and ambiguity can i handle? should i sit here writing a blog now… or should i…. whatever!

this morning opened my 'to do list'. in the last days in a quite chaotic but still productive way i've been doing many things. small things, administrative things, cleaning things... so i thought it was time to tick them off. but to my unpleasant surprise all the tasks i did were not in my 'to do list'! i immediately started to put the things i finished in the list and ticking them off but that felt quite embarrassing.
so the big question which immediately appeared: do things you did still count if they are not in your 'to do list'?
in general my 'to do list' works. it's a mind-map, so there's no order. it's just not to forget what i have to do. no planning involved. every now and then i try to make an order... but it doesn't work. the only plan that really works is 'the evening before the deadline'. for the rest it's a lot about starting things... getting a mail...going on facebook...writing a tweet...listening to a song....watching a clip... having a skype-talk... doing a completely other task...making coffee...
the good thing is that we have a word for it these days: procrastination! when i was a teenager we didn't have that. i would have loved to use it with my parents and teachers: 'sorry...suffering from procrastination at the moment a lot...' they would have been impressed. but we didn't have it so they just told me to work harder and to put the right priorities in life. no excuses!
wiki-pedia says:'In psychology, procrastination refers to the act of replacing high-priority or important actions with tasks of lower priority, or doing something from which one brings enjoyment, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time.' 
when surfing around a bit to find out how to overcome this newest disease you will be told to work with a 'to do list' but with priorities, to prioritize, to schedule, to manage and to set yourself goals. which sounds, in other words, a lot like what my parents and teachers told me years ago...
probably there will be a pill soon to fight this terrible disfunction. as they can develop a pill to keep your penis focussed longer it should be a piece of cake to keep your brains focussed for many many hours.


but i would propose not to fight procrastination but to celebrate it...to embrace making your day a complete chaos...full of enjoyment... to accept that the first thing you do is probably the most important!
and if there are still these kind of tasks which seems to be important but you never do... make them unimportant... kick them out of your list... it's just not your thing! 
yeah!!!! let's get procrastinated!!!